Invisible women indeed
A play in three acts. WITS is Women In Technology & Science.
Act one:
Good choice. Caroline Criado-Perez is brilliant, as any fule kno.
Act two scene one:
In other words, don’t read this book that you chose, read some other book that someone else will choose from this list of names provided by me.
Act two scene two:
Act three:
Curtain.
God I hate this.
This book has been making the rounds of our company; thank god no one’s piped up to tell everyone it’s ‘problematic’. Yet.
I once read a personal account written by a young woman employed in a smallish high-tech computer company in which the workers and administration was overwhelmingly male. It was an uncomfortable work environment, though she tried hard to “get along” with the general sexist behavior. Prompted by a desire for diversity, the leaders announced that they were going to actively increase the percentage of women programmers with a special recruitment drive; not much was done.
Within several years, 6 veteran male programmers announced they were transgender.
You guessed it. The company congratulated itself and closed the women’s-recruitment program.
I almost certainly have erred on the details, and I cannot vouch for its truth, but I wonder very much if WITS would consider this a success story for feminism.
Probably.
Women in Technology and Science: “Women, if you can’t talk about men, keep your mouths shut! And stay invisible!”
Oh fer…
It’s such an excellent book, such an important book. I doubt the complainers have read it, beyond possibly skimming it for references to trans people or biological sex. It talks about real problems, serious problems, but it dares to use the word “women” in its normal definition, so I guess that’s too much. Shame on WITS for bothering to respond, but I give them credit for not dropping the book.
Well, they’re not dropping the book, but they are planning to use the discussion to talk about how transphobic it must be because this one person on Twitter said so.
On the basis of one tweet they did this? Good grief. That the book is about sex-based differences doesn’t make it trans-exclusionary, as trans people’s bodies are still bodies and not identities.
J. A., part of what gives up the TRAs as misogynists is how they insist that talking about sex-based differences is forbidden. It’s not a minor point to them, it’s a central point: you can’t talk about women without talking about them. That is intended to derail any real conversation about feminism or sex-based oppression, it’s not an accident.
“Sex and gender are not the same.”
“Oh no — it’s you Terfs who can’t tell the difference between sex and gender!” (Then proceeds to conflate sex with gender, repeatedly.)
It’s like a never-ending game of “I know you are, but what am I?”
Sastra, the projection among TERFs is almost as strong as Trump’s projection of his own shitty worldview onto everyone else.
Even if – and it’s a huge if – one accepts that the book is exclusionary of transwomen, why the ever-loving fuck is non-binary ‘folks’ brought into this? NBs claim to be neither women nor men so by definition have excluded themselves from conversations specifically about women.
AoS, it seems like NBs want to have it both ways – not women when it suits them, but women when it comes time to shut women out of the conversation. Sort of like the shifting definitions of sex and gender used by trans to fit whatever point they are trying to make at the time…or at least, to make it what they think of as a fit.
It’s like trying to build a house on a sand dune.
I’m surprised that there was no mention of transwomen/queer/NBfolks of colour, along with a group that no-one has yet realised will – if the craziness continues its growth – become the most oppressed and marginalized and excluded group of all: the men who might one day question their gender although they are perfectly happy as they are at present. These poor souls are going through life oblivious to the wrongs perpetuated on them by the evil Gender Assigment Department. They are forced to live a lie that they don’t even know is a lie; inauthenticity has been forced upon them and they don’t even realise it. Won’t anybody think of the potential future trans!!!!!!
Absolutely embarrassing. Let’s read this book about invisible women and then lets NOT talk about them, lets make our conversation about the men who would like to be them, but not actually be THEM, because then no one would be talking about them then, theyd be talking about women, who are, as we’ve established, invisible. Once again for those at the back?! Appalling. Feminism that excludes WOMEN is not feminism.
It’s the new male-inclusive, female-exclusive feminism. Forhiminism? Friminism for short?
That’s good. That should catch on.